It is hot and getting hotter. The evidence for global warming is growing with a long string of successive global heat records. The hottest months, the hottest seasons and the hottest years are stacking up. While individual weather records should not be confused with climate, decades of temperature data convincingly make the case for a warming world. Hot weather forces…

Climate talks concluded in Bonn, Germany last Friday “on track to produce the first comprehensive draft of the new, universal climate change agreement that governments are committed to reach in Paris, in December,” according to a press release from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. “At this session, countries have crystalized their positions and have requested the Co-Chairs to produce a…

From Panama on up, the greenhouse effect and the onset of El Niño is leading to more in the way of drought and extreme variability in weather patterns. Drought across El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua displaced some 2 million rural residents, mostly smallholder farmers and their families this year. In Panama, rainfall this spring has set a new record low and residents have been coping with a heat wave.

Threatened by rising sea levels and the incidence of extreme weather events, coastal communities, economies and ecosystems could benefit greatly by conserving natural coastal “infrastructure,” as well as implementing innovative hybrid approaches that combine habitat restoration and built structures, according to NOAA study authors.

The Cost of Hurricanes The past ten years has seen a spike in catastrophic hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, causing more than $300 billion of damage and displacing, over 2000 deaths and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Cities along the eastern seaboard and Gulf states are becoming more vulnerable to future large hurricanes. According to Weather.com, cities such as…

The combination of thermal expansion, melting ice, and extreme precipitation are contributing to flooding, which significantly increases the costs of climate change. Recent flooding in Central Europe accrued unprecedented costs and the UK in particular experienced some of the worst flooding in the island nation’s history. We have seen record setting downpours in Japan and recurrent widespread flooding in Australia. Last summer, we…